Nastaliq

History

The name Nastaliq "is a contraction of the Persian naskh-e ta'liq (Persian: نَسْخِ تَعلیق), meaning a hanging or suspended naskh." Virtually all Safavid authors (like Dust Muhammad or Qadi Ahmad) attributed the invention of nastaliq to Mir Ali Tabrizi, who lived at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century. That tradition was questioned by Elaine Wright, who traced the evolution of Nastaliq in 14th-century Iran and showed how it developed gradually among scribes in Shiraz. According to her studies, nastaliq has its origin from naskh alone, and not by combining naskh and taliq, as was commonly thought. In addition to study of the practice of calligraphy, Elaine Wright also found a document written by Jafar Tabrizi c. 1430, according to whom:

It must be known that nastaʿliq is derived from naskh. Some Shirazi [scribes] modified it [naskh] by taking out the flattened [letter] kaf and straight bottom part of [the letters] sin, lam and nun. From other scripts they then brought in a curved sin and stretched forms and introduced variations in the thickness of the line. So a new script was created, to be named nastaʿliq. After a while Tabrizi [scribes] modified what Shirazi [scribes] had created by gradually rendering it thinner and defining its canons, until the time when Khwaja Mir ʿAli Tabrizi brought this script to perfection.

Thus, "our earliest written source also credits Shirazi scribes with the development of nastaʿliq and Mir ʿAli Tabrizi with its canonization." Wright's proposed origin of nastaliq was complicated by studies of Francis Richard, who argued on the basis of some manuscripts from Tabriz that its early evolution was not confined to Shiraz. Finally, many authors point out that development of nastaʿliq was a process which occurred over several centuries. For example, Gholam-Hosayn Yusofi, Ali Alparslan and Sheila Blair recognize a gradual shift towards nastaʿliq in some 13th-century manuscripts. Hamid Reza Afsari traces the first elements of the style to 5th/11th-century copies of Persian translations of the Qur'an, and Rawāqī argues that the referenced translations may be even older.

Persian differs from Arabic in its proportion of straight and curved letters. It also lacks the definite article al-, whose upright alif and lam are responsible for Arabic writing's distinct verticality and rhythm. Hanging scripts like taliq and nastaliq were suitable for writing Persian –when taliq was used for court documents, nastaliq was developed for Persian poetry, "whose hemistiches encourage the pile-up of letters against the intercolumnar ruling. Only later was it adopted for prose."

The first master of nastaliq was the aforementioned Mir Ali Tabrizi, who passed his style to his son ʿUbaydallah. A student of ʿUbaydallah, Jafar Tabrizi (d. 1431) (see quote above), moved to Herat, when he became the head of the scriptorium (kitabkhana) of prince Baysunghur (therefore his epithet Baysunghuri). Jafar trained several students in nastaliq, of whom the most famous was Azhar Tabrizi (d. 1475). Its classical form nastaliq achieved under Sultan Ali Mashhadi (d. 1520), a student of Azhar (or perhaps one of Azhar's students) who worked for Sultan Husayn Bayqara (1469–1506) and his vizier Ali-Shir Nava'i.

Simultaneously, a different style of nastaliq developed in western and southern Iran. This style was associated with ʿAbd al-Rahman Khwarazmi, the calligrapher of the Pir Budaq Qara Qoyunlu (1456–1466), and then with his children, ʿAbd al-Karim Khwarazmi and ʿAbd al-Rahim Anisi (both active at the court of Ya'qub Beg Aq Qoyunlu; 1478–1490). This more angular western Iranian style was largely dominant at the beginning of the Safavid era, but then lost to the style canonized by Sultan Ali Mashhadi; however, it continued to be used in the Indian subcontinent.

The most famous calligrapher of the next generation in eastern lands was Mir Ali Heravi (d. 1544), who was especially renowned for his calligraphic specimens (qitʿa). The eastern style of nastaliq became the predominant style in western Iran, as artists gravitated to work in the Safavid royal scriptorium. The most famous of these calligraphers working for the court in Tabriz was Shah Mahmud Nishapuri (d. 1564/1565), known especially for the unusual choice of nastaliq as a script used for the copy of the Qur'an. Nastaliq achieved its apogee in the writings of Mir Emad Hassani (d. 1615), "whose style was the model in the following centuries." Mir Emad's successors in the 17th and 18th centuries developed a more elongated style of nastaliq, with wider spaces between words. Mirza Mohammad Reza Kalhor (d. 1892), the most important calligrapher of the 19th century, reintroduced the more compact style, writing words on a smaller scale in a single motion. In the 19th century nastaliq was also adopted in Iran for lithographed books. In the 20th century, "the use of nastaliq declined. After World War II, however, interest in calligraphy and above all in nastaliq revived, and some outstandingly able masters of the art have since then emerged."

The use of nastaliq expanded beyond Iran at a very early date. Timurids brought it to the Indian subcontinent, and nastaliq became the favorite script of the Persian court of the Mughals. Notable masters of nastaliq such as Muhammad Husayn Kashmiri (d. 1611/1612) and Abd al-Rahim Anbarin-Qalam worked for Akbar (1556–1605) and Jahangir (1605–1627). Another important practitioner of the script was Abd al-Rashid Daylami (d. 1671), nephew and student of Mir Emad, who became court calligrapher of Shah Jahan (1628–1658) after arriving in India. During this era, nastaliq became the common script for writing the Hindustani language, especially Standard Urdu.

Nastaliq was also adopted in the Ottoman Empire, which has always had strong cultural ties to Iran. Here it was known as taliq (Turkish: talik), not to be confused with the Persian taliq script. The first Iranian calligraphers who brought nastaliq to Ottoman lands, including Asadullah Kirmani (d. 1488), belonged to the western tradition. However, at a relatively early stage, Ottoman calligraphers adopted the eastern style of nastaliq. In the 17th century, a student of Mir Emad, Darvish Abdi Bokharai (d. 1647), transplanted his style to Istanbul. The greatest master of nastaliq in 18th century was Mehmed Yasari (d. 1798), who closely followed Mir Emad. This tradition was further developed by Yasari's son Mustafa Izzet (d. 1849), who founded a distinct Ottoman school of nastaliq. He introduced new and precise proportions of the script that differed from the Iranian tradition. The most important member of this school in the second half of the 19th century was Sami Efendi (d. 1912), who taught many famous practitioners of nastaliq, including Mehmed Nazif Bey (d. 1913), Mehmed Hulusi Yazgan (d. 1940) and Necmeddin Okyay (d. 1976). The specialty of the Ottoman school was celî nastaliq, used in inscriptions and mosque plates.